It was one of the staple foods of the 1970s, a teatime favourite alongside sliced Spam, Alphabetti Spaghetti and Angel Delight. Now Smash, the freeze-dried potato product marketed on TV by a group of laughing Martian robots, is back. Premier Foods, which owns the brand, is relaunching it with a new, healthier recipe and an additional range of flavours.

It is not the only kitsch classic brand to be making an unlikely comeback. Earlier this year Cinzano, the sweet Italian vermouth best known for the 1980s advertising campaign in which Leonard Rossiter tipped it repeatedly over Joan Collins's bosom, brought out its first new product for 144 years in the form of SpritzzUp!, an alcopop-style Cinzano cocktail.

A report by the food retailing bible, the Grocer, has found that in everything from crisps to hairspray, aftershave to sweets, so-called "orphan brands" - those makes of food and drink that have fallen from fashion, but never quite disappeared from the supermarket shelves - are staging a comeback.

Britons may now believe themselves to be a nation of sophisticated chefs, but it seems we have never lost our fondness for the kitsch food and drink brands we favoured when we were younger. "These old favourites do tend to come back in a cyclical fashion," says Sonya Hook, a drinks specialist at the Grocer and the author of the report, "but [manufacturers] have also perhaps enhanced the product and its image".

Some of the brands have never gone away - Spam and Smash have actually been on the shelves, but out of favour, since their 70s heyday. But they are being given a revamp to take advantage of people's interest in nostalgic brands, Ms Hook said. Others are reinventing themselves include Mateus Rosé, which is undergoing an expensive relaunch, and Blue Nun which is popular again after the ultra-sweet German wine was revamped with a new image and an association with erotic underwear retailer Ann Summers.

The revival, market analysts say, can be explained in part by the fondness for nostalgia among the key 30 to 45-year-old demographic.

This group's sentimental fondness for the brands of their childhood also explains the revival of brands such as Brut aftershave and Harmony hairspray.

Fox's confectionery is bringing back the 1980s toffee sweet Poppets, with new branding incorporating a Rubik's Cube and a Space Hopper, while the crisp brand Ringos will also be reintroduced after a campaign by fans.

"One of the factors which unites a lot of these brands is that they had extremely iconic advertising at the time," said Tom Blackett, group deputy chairman of the branding consultancy Interbrand. "Certainly Smash and Cinzano did; Mateus Rosé was one of the first popular mass market brands of wine. So it's very much a lifestyle thing, people wanting to buy a bottle of the iconic Mateus Rosé. There's always an abiding fondness for brands that were very great among those that can remember them."

But if some manufacturers hope to cash in on consumers' memories, others are counting on a new generation of shoppers who don't remember the brands the first time around.

The striking recent surge in popularity of rosé wine - sales are growing at five times the rate of red or white - has been explained by a new popularity among young women who don't remember its slightly naff image in earlier decades.

The relaunched Blue Nun, complete with a crisper recipe and updated nun logo, is targeted at the same expanding female market, neatly described by its manufacturers as "women aged 25 to 35 who drink a lot of wine but are not interested in complexity".

Cinzano SpritzzUp!, according to its publicity, "is aimed at women aged between 18 and 30 ... who have probably heard of Cinzano, but have no existing heritage with the brand".

"The people who have grown up with Cinzano from the 1970s are a bit older now; we have almost skipped a generation," Karen Crawley, the UK marketing manager for Campari, which owns Cinzano, said yesterday. "It has gone from grandmother to granddaughter."

Lifestyle changes have also played their part. We are more likely, said Ms Hook, to host dinner parties and to drink at home rather than at the pub, meaning consumers are increasingly choosing to mix their own cocktails. This may also explain John Lewis's announcement in December that sales of hostess trolleys had leapt by 83% since the previous year.

Nostalgia, however, can only carry a brand so far. The Smash campaign of the 1970s may have been voted one of the best advertisements of the century, but a spokesman said yesterday that there were no plans to bring back the Martians.